Today's one-way hypertext-- the World Wide Web-- is far
too shallow. The Xanadu project foresaw world-wide hypertext decades
ago, and endeavored to create a much deeper system. The Web, however,
took over with a very shallow structure. Our simple method, very
different, allows--

• UNBREAKABLE LINKS.• COPYRIGHT SIMPLIFICATION
AND SOFTENING: by special permissions and methods, quotations of any size
may be used by anyone and mixed together frictionlessly.• ORIGIN CONNECTION: All
quotations and excerpts stay connected to their original.• TWO-WAY LINKS: anyone may publish
connected comments to any page.• SIDE-BY-SIDE INTERCOMPARISON
OF CONNECTED DOCUMENTS-- showing two-way links, differences between versions,
origins of contexts. (For a simple working demonstration, see our
new free CosmicBook(tm) reader.)• DEEP VERSION MANAGEMENT:
documents may be changed incrementally (with each version available); versions
may branch; authors may easily see exact differences between versions.• INCREMENTAL PUBLISHING:
new changes may be continually made by authors without breaking links.

How can this be? Very simple,
but very different.

THE XANADU MODEL

The Xanadu model has always been very simple:
make content available with certain permissions; then distribute and maintain
documents simply as lists of these contents, to be filled in by the browser
(in the same way that browsers now fill in GIFs). This list of contents
is effectively a virtual file of contents to be sent for and how to put
them together.

This means

• everyone can re-use
all content virtually, simply by listing the desired content.• Since links are between
the addresses of these contents, links are intrinsically bidirectional,
may be made by everyone, and may overlap in vast numbers.• Since the original address of
content is known, its original context may be obtained.

The political fight against the
weight of today's standards and methods is enormous. But what we
are trying to do is clear up the problems that these standards, and the
present way of thinking, have created.